Tacoma man charged in ‘bondage room’ rape

Originally published April 19, 2011 at 10:57 pm
Updated April 20, 2011 at 7:43 am

A Seattle SWAT team on Saturday arrested a 66-year-old Tacoma man suspected of kidnapping, raping and assaulting a 24-year-old woman he picked up on Aurora Avenue North and took home to his "bondage room," according to a police spokesman.

A Seattle SWAT team on Saturday arrested a 66-year-old Tacoma man suspected of kidnapping, raping and assaulting a 24-year-old woman he picked up on Aurora Avenue North and took home to his “bondage room,” according to a police spokesman.

John Joseph Hauff Jr. was charged Tuesday with first-degree kidnapping, first-degree rape and second-degree assault and is being held in the King County Jail without bail, jail records show.

According to charging documents, Hauff tortured the woman with electrodes for three hours in a torture chamber located on his isolated property.

At the time of his arrest, Hauff was with another woman, Seattle Police spokesman Jeff Kappel said at a news conference Tuesday evening. When police searched Hauff’s Tacoma residence after his arrest, they found a “bondage room” and recovered torture devices, he said.

“Great care appears to have been invested in the room’s construction,” according to charging papers. “The walls are approximately 8 inches thick, making most sounds — such as screams — emanating from inside the room almost undetectable. Police recovered syringes, belts, paddles, sexual devices, locks, ropes, chains, tubing and two devices that appear to be designed to administer electricity to the human body.”

Hauff has one prior conviction for patronizing a prostitute in 1996, according to charging documents.

The woman Hauff is accused of raping was working as a prostitute April 2 in the 8200 block of Aurora Avenue North in Seattle, according to charging documents. Hauff solicited her for sexual role-playing around 9:30 that night, and after negotiating with him, the woman got into his vehicle and they drove to the man’s house, Kappel said.

On the drive there, Hauff’s “demeanor changed,” and the woman became concerned for her safety, Kappel said. Before leaving Seattle, she asked Hauff to stop for cigarettes, and when he did, she sent a text message to a friend, with his license-plate number and a request to call police if she didn’t make contact by midnight, charging papers say. She told the friend Hauff lived in Tacoma.

Once inside the house, Hauff led the woman into a room blindfolded and immediately clamped a chain around her neck, tied her to a wall and then a table and raped and tortured her, charging papers say.

The woman then told Hauff about the text she had sent, and after looking at her cellphone, he untied her, gave her more money and then drove her to another location, telling her not to contact police, Kappel said.

“It was obviously an extremely smart thing to do,” Kappel said of the woman’s text message. Within days of the attack, the woman contacted Seattle police. “It’s atrocious, based on what we’ve seen,” Kappel said of the case. He encouraged anyone with information to contact police at 206-625-5011.